Tulsa Dum

Tulsa Doom first appeared in the story Cat and Skull ( born Cat and Skull ) written in 1928. In the draft version of the story, he was listed as Tulsis Doom, and only in the final version, Howard called him Tulsa Doom. As the story is well known, the Cat and the Skull were rejected by the editor of Weird Tales and were not published during the life of the author himself ^[1] . Only in 1967, the publishing house Lancer Books published a story in the King Kull collection called The Cat Delcard ^[2] . In the work, he was the sworn enemy of the Wallyzian king Atlanta Kull , and was the high priest of the serpent cult. According to Tulsa Doom's description, he looks like a man without skin and muscles on his face, that is, with a bare skull; the revived dead, something like a lich . A similar description of Howard assigned to another character mage. In 1929, a year after Weird Tales rejected the story of The Cat and the Skull , the Howard Adventure novel Skullface ( Russian Face Skull ) appeared, drawing a wave of criticism from the publication. Researchers at Robert Howard, such as Patrice Luin, believe that the image of the main villain from Skullface Katulos from Atlantis was clearly inspired by the necromancer from Cat and Skull . ^[3]

Hassan ibn Sabbah - one of the types of Tulsa Duma film incarnation

Beginning in 1932, Robert Howard began writing a series of short stories about Cimmerian Conan, who lived in the Hyborian era , a fictional forgotten period of humanity that existed between the death of Atlantis and the beginning of the historical period. In some of the stories, such as “The Scarlet Citadel ”, “The Black Colossus ”, and “The Hour of the Dragon ”, there are characters like villains similar to Tulsa Dum, Tzot Lanti, Tugra Khotan and Xsaltotun, respectively.

In 1967, Lin Carter writes down the unfinished story of Robert Howard's Pre-Dawn Horsemen . Partially editing the plot and adding the ending, Carter introduced Tulsa Duma as the main villain ^[4] .

After the death of Howard Tulsa, Doom appears periodically in Kull comics, beginning in 1972 ^[5] . He appears as the main enemy of the king Kullav comics Kull the Conqueror # 3 and # 7. In the issue of Kull the Conqueror # 11, based on Howard's story with an ax, I will rule , Tulsa Doom pretends to be a Valusian aristocrat, Ardion, who conspires against Kull . Subsequently, the Kull the Conqueror comic strip series was canceled and Tulsa Doom did not appear on the comic pages until 1975, when Marvel published the Kull and the Barbarians comic series ^[6] . Further in the Kull the Destroyer series in issue # 29 (Marvel Comics, 1978) Tulsa Doom reappears under the guise of Ardion and weaves conspiracies against Kull ^[7] . Subsequently, Tulsa Doom appears in comics about Conan and Andrew Offut 's stories about Cormac Mac Arta .

In 1982, John Milius and Oliver Stone 's Conan the Barbarian was released, based on the works of Robert Howard. The main villain appears Tulsa Doom, played by African American actor James Earl Jones , after which the character was fixed Negroid appearance. In connection with this, the press has made accusations against the filmmakers of racial discrimination. Journalist John Preston of New Statesman, wrote that “.. it’s not enough that the leader of the bloody cult is black, and he also turns into a snake, which makes his image vile and repulsive” ^[8] . The film tells about the head of the cult of the Serpent, who has a great influence on the Hyborian states. The origin of Tulsa Duma in the film and further novelization is changed; in the film, he is a representative of the serpent, a race of intelligent reptiles that once dominated the planet before the arrival of man, represented in the Howard's Kingdom of the Shadows story. In his book THE HISTORY of the AFRO-AMERICANS: The book of Simion , Ivory Simion makes a number of comparisons according to which the snake-like image of James Earl Jones , as a representative of the Negroid race , the creators of the film quite possibly goes back to the mythology of African tribes and Olmecs . According to these mythologies, in which there are legends about the serpent gods and the serpent-like ruler rulers, they ruled the earth before the arrival of the white man, which partly coincides with the description of the serpent people from Robert Howard ’s The Kingdom of Shadows ^[9] . Among other things, the cinematic image of Tulsa Duma as the priest of Set is partially copied from another character of Robert Howard - That of Amon . On the other hand, the writers used the image of the leader of the totalitarian cult ^[10] taking Hassan ibn Sabbah as a model; this is well seen in the film’s scenes, for example, in the one in which the Duma orders his follower to unconditionally jump from the rock and breaks ^[11] . As noted, the relationship of Conan to Tulsa Duma at the end of the film takes on the character of the Oedipus complex , given that Tulsa Doom served Conan as a father figure ^[12] . An interesting fact is that in the 1980 film, Darth Vader , in the voice of the same James Earl Jones, tells Luke that he is his father, much like he said in the film to Stone Conan ^[13] .

Publishing Dynamite Entertainment in 2009 published a series of comics about Tulsa Duma ^{[14] [15]} . The comic was supposed to serve as a preliminary stage on the way to the creation of a full-length tape dedicated to Tulsa Douma. The appearance of a black necromancer was copied from actor Gimon Hounsou , who was declared as an performer of the role of Duma in the expected film. Also, the actor, according to some information, wanted to act as a producer of the tape ^{[16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21]} .

Literature

Comics

Movies

• Conan the barbarian
• Tulsa Doom , a film planned back in 2008, has not yet been released.

1. Patrice Luine. Origin of Atlantis // Bran Mac Morn, the last king. Kull, fugitive from Atlantis. - Eksmo, 2014. - ISBN 978-5-699-66012-4 .
2. Kenneth Von Gunden. Conan the Barbarian: Sword and Sorcery // Flights of Fancy: The Great Fantasy Films. - McFarland, 1989. - p . 14-29 . - ISBN 0786412143 .
3. James Michael Welsh, Donald M. Whaley. Conan the Barbarian // The Oliver Stone Encyclopedia. - Rowman & Littlefiel, 2013. - p . 48-52 . - ISBN 081088352X .
4. Jonas Prida. The cultural Conan // Conan Meets the Academy: Multidisciplinary Essays on the Enduring Barbarian. - McFarland, 2012. - ISBN 0786461527 .
5. Jürgen Müllera. The Movie Of The 80s. - Taschen, 2002. - ISBN 3822817376 .
6. Ivory Simion. The old dominion / / THE HISTORY of the AFRO-AMERICANS: THE BOOKS OF SIMION. - Xlibris Corporation, 2014. - ISBN 1493116568 .

• Tulsa Dum (Eng.) On the Internet Movie Database
• Tulsa Doom in the Marvel Database
• Tulsa Doom at Mavericuniverse.wikia
• Accept No Imitations: Thulsa Doom (inaccessible link)
• The Call of Kathulos: Kull, Skull and "Call"
• The Cat, the Skull, and the Editor